Recipes By Thirschfeld
25 recipes found
Celery Juice and Lemon Tom Collins (Mocktail or Cocktail)
I like this cocktail recipe and I needed to share it. Celery juice is great for when you want to go without booze. That said it is good with Tequila or Vodka.
Pot-Roasted Collard Greens
This pot-roasted collard greens recipe is based on Thomas Keller's recipe. If you have never roasted collards or any other green, I highly recommend it.
Grilled Bananas with Buttered Maple Sauce and English Almond Toffee
S'mores sch'mores. This is my go to grill dessert. Quick, easy and delightful. I have a friend who gives us a wonderful box of English Almond Toffee each year. I like to crumble it and use it as a topping for lots of desserts.
The Grilled Lake House Burger
This is my burger mix. I bump up the umami just for good measure. It pays handsomely in the end. Make a build your own burger platter with lots of fresh stuff. I like Bibb lettuce, fresh cucumbers, pickles, fat slices of homegrown tomatoes, grilled red onion, cheeses of all kinds, and of course condiments like ketchup and whatnot. On a serious note, butter and grill those buns! It is the touch that makes all the difference.
Chez Panisse's Potatoes and Onions Roasted with Vinegar and Thyme
This recipe is one of the first recipes I ever cooked using the new potatoes from my garden. I used Russian Banana's and boy did it make them shine. I still use this recipe often. It is a standard, it's easy and delicious with all kinds of other dishes.
White Rice, Sort of Jiro-Style
I use a rice, either short grain or medium grain, that is processed using the kapika method which is a dry polishing method. It basically uses the grains to polish themselves. It reduces the amount of bran left on the rice, which helps to keep the grain fresh, and calls for no rinsing. This kind of rice is the kind of rice chopsticks are made for. It isn't as sticky as Thai sticky rice but the grains still bind together more than enough so you aren't picking up individual grains with your chopsticks. It has a beautiful taste and texture. I think the enameled cast iron pot works great here. The rice doesn't stick to the bottom and it is good even heat.
Long Cooked Romano Beans with Pancetta
I think Romano beans are the perfect bean and are really suited to long slow cooking. What I like about them is the exterior pod retains its tooth but the little interior beans inside are creamy much like a lima beans. It is a two for one deal for me and the best of both worlds. If you want a little heat add red pepper flakes.
Wilted Spinach with Bottarga
If you don't like or have bottarga just use sesame seeds. They are a perfectly wonderful substitution. I squeeze a lot of the liquid out of the spinach after cooking but I always take care not to over squeeze. If the spinach becomes to dry it gives you the feeling of a sponge sucking all the moisture from you mouth when you eat it.
Oven Braised Buttermilk Chicken with Za'atar
In addition to looking cool Frenching the chicken legs releases the tendons that are sometimes stringy and tough. This allows the legs to become tender and succulent.
Grilled Cheese with Asparagus
Grilled cheese is never ordinary. Even if it is a hamburger bun turned inside out and grilled with white American cheese it can be the right thing at the right time. It is damn near the perfect foil for all kinds of flavors and it is just waiting for the imagination to take it for a magic culinary ride. There are no rules just things you might want to consider. Country style loaves are great but often when grilled they want to cut the top of your mouth, or at the very least act as sand paper on bare skin, the option is a potato country loaf which is going to be tender and grill up nicely. The idea of using anything other than butter is somewhat appalling but you could see olive oil as an agreeable option on the right occasion, even rendered animal fat could be a good choice. Pan choice of course is important and cast iron always works well as does medium heat. Medium heat takes longer but it will in most cases assure melty gooey cheese and a good brown crust with a good crunch.
Truffle Scented Chive Dip
Once, when I was outside of San Francisco on a backroad near Napa I had something similar to this truffle scented chive dip recipe at a French Laundry.
Sardinian Flatbread with Feta and Za' Atar
My rosemary in the garden finally froze and I was looking for something to do with the flatbreads I had just made, meaning usually I brush it with olive oil and then sprinkle it with rosemary, coarse salt and black pepper. Then this came to mind, I think my flatbread will be singing a new multicultural tune.
Pane Carasau
This pane carasau recipe is Sardinian flatbread or "sheet music" bread. It is really a lot like a cracker although I know it looks much like a tortilla.
Potato Pancakes with Ham, Gruyere and Fennel
Fennel, gruyere, ham and potatoes were meant for each other like pizza dough, tomato sauce and mozzarella cheese. There are a couple of ways to go about potato pancakes. One of the main debates for me is raw grated or bake the potato, cool and saute. For this recipe I decided to go the baked potato route because it insures the interior is cooked and you can do them on the stove top insuring a thick crispy crust. The next question is soft interior to crispy exterior ratio. To thin and you get no creamy and to thick and there isn't enough crunch. Finally the kind of fat is really important too. Oils don't seem to give you the golden brown and sometimes cook unevenly. Butter browns to fast but will give a good flavor and crust if added toward the end as if you were using it to finish. Finally chicken fat, lard, goose fat and duck fat are all great in my book. They flavor the potatoes nicely and brown the pancakes very evenly and make them golden. A couple of years ago I made some ring molds by cutting the tops and bottoms off of water chestnut cans. First off they only cost 99 cents and second they are a good size, 3 inches round and 2 inches thick. This is the size ring mold you will need for these pancakes.
Beurre Noisette
There are many ways to make clarified butter, but this recipe is my favorite. When I use creamy buerre noisette, I expect no water to be left in the oil.
Crushed Cauliflower
This is comfort food. It is overcooked but with restraint which gives it a flavor that is deep, resonant and all cauliflower. I can stand at the stove and eat all of it right out of the pan, so keep that in mind before you taste for seasoning. What happens is you get these really caramelly crunchier bits and these bigger pieces that are creamy and tender. It is really, really good with prime rib, leg of lamb or as I said all by itself while standing at the stove.
Popcorn Popped in Bacon Fat (or "Bacon Grease")
I may not be as thrifty a cook as I want to be but I do know not to throw away the bacon fat. This bacn grease popcorn recipe is a great use for the ingredient.
Radish and Cress Side
This is a homage to every Central and South American co-worker I ever had the privilege of working with in a kitchen. To the things they taught me about their food, culture and heritage from papusas to tamales to lorca, the food is and will always be kick ass. The one thing I learned early on is food south of the American border is more often than not, not served with refried beans and rice. Thank god! This is a salad and the variations are infinite, where the greens maybe different but the radishes are the anchor. You could use cabbage, wilted with a little salt for an hour or so or any peppery green. Make that enchilada or tamale pie and serve this as the side, you won't regret it, trust me.
Cream Corn
This is a really simple recipe but do not think for a moment it isn't complex. What I like about it is it uses the starch from the corn to thicken the cream. You could also add a small pinch of curry powder for a nice change. I like to serve this like many in the South would, with pan seared dove or quail but roast or fried chicken would be good too.
Baked Plums with Creme Fraiche and Marcona Almonds
I remember in the 70's, when Cajun food was the thing, that grapefruits broiled with brown sugar were all the rage. Well at least in our house they were. I don't know if it was Paul Prudomme who made these famous or who but when the brown sugar melted into the grapefruit it was a nice balance of sour and sweet. Having sweet plums to use, even though they are sweet they are still a little sour, I thought this might be a great weekend breakfast side. Something to serve along side omelets or even oatmeal.
Lacto-Fermented Cabbage Sauerkraut
For this Lacto Fermented Cabbage recipe it's important to use organic cabbage so you get the micro-organisms you need and you want slow growing varieties.
Burrata with Garden & Wild Berries, Honey, Balsamic and Fresh Ground Pepper
I have always liked the idea of cheese courses and I am one to order a cheese course when offered. This one I use as a dessert but is also good for breakfast or maybe with some arugula as a light lunch. I have been wanting to try burrata for a long time and low and behold I am finally getting the chance. If you don't know burrata it is fresh mozzarella wrapped around fresh mozz curd and cream. My Cheese lady, who I was lucky enough to teach as a student in culinary school, told me it is mozzarella crack and I can do nothing but agree. Everything in this recipe compliments each other and brings forward all the flavors of each ingredient. - thirschfeld
Chamomile Meditation Tea
The beauty of growing your own chamomile is you can pick just the flowers which look beautiful floating in the teapot or cup of tea. I personally like the German over the Roman chamomile. The Roman just seems to fruity to me. The meditation part of this recipe comes from spending a couple of hours outside carefully picking each of these flowers. Seems tedious but then you find yourself adrift in thought, smelling the beautiful scent of chamomile, and the soothing buzz of insects cruising from bud to bud. I eventually wind up with about a gallon container full of flowers. I will put the flowers on a large screen to dry and I won't drink any of this tea till late fall or early winter. But rest assured when I do it will instantly take me back to the warm early summer afternoon of flower picking. I really like it when I can find a little bit of summer in winter.
Sun Baked Strawberries with Madame Clicquot
I don't even know where to begin. If you have ever been to the House of Clicquot in the champagne region of France and then found a strawberry patch heated by the summer French sun then you get my drift. I recreate this, with my amazing and wonderful wife every late spring with my own strawberries and sometimes I even invite the La Grande Dame. It is totally about the time, place and the quality of the strawberries. And, yes, I have a sink in my Orchard Garden. Just one last note, if you don't have a strawberry patch get your better half to skip out on work on a Friday afternoon, grab a blanket to sit on and go to a you-pick. Take some champagne and anything else you might enjoy and get yourself out of the kitchen, office or whatever rut you may be in. I have eaten strawberries in about every recipe and at about every restaurant around the world and it doesn't get any better than sun baked berries, a late afternoon, someone you like, love and really care about and a great bottle of champagne. If you give it a try I really think you will agree. And I challenge those at food52 to disagree.